August 18, 2017

Trump's ground is shifting

Something is changing. There are shifts all around, portending an enlightened permanency. They're in the air, on the air, in print and in polling — and they're screaming that this country has just about had it with Trump. Irrevocably.

A small core of the fanatically loyal will hang on till the bitter end, of course, but an end there shall be, in either resignation or impeachment. Trump's party is already disgraced beyond redemption, but ultimately his loyal core will shrink to a stat of dismissibility — and then the GOP will pretend it's a party of noble indignation and inviolable standards. After all of Trump's lies and outrages and ineptitude and obstructions of justice, one would have thought that Charlottesville would have been the end. It was instead just another beginning, but this beginning appears to be one of permanent shifts.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and erstwhile defender of the Trumpian faith, has pronounced the president unstable and incompetent. Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (as well as the Dixie state's senior senator, Lindsey Graham) has further pronounced him as lacking in moral clarity. Scott says he'll no longer "defend the indefensible."

The founder of the pro-Trump journal American Affairs, Julius Krein, has given up and is cashing it in. "I can’t stand by this disgraceful administration any longer," he writes in a NY Times op-ed. "His refusal this weekend to specifically and immediately denounce [neo-Nazis] was both morally disgusting and monumentally stupid." So was Krein's early defense and lingering support of Trump, but at any rate his belated disgust is one more leg kicked out from under Trump's editorial infrastructure.

Business leaders are fleeing this morally bankrupt and monumentally stupid president. The American Cancer Society and the Cleveland Clinic have both announced they are cancelling their 2018 fundraisers at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce has asked that others avoid the venue. An 86-year-old Kennedy Center recipient, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, says she'll decline the following White House reception "in light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative [of] our current leadership."

Said "leadership" has brought its chief of staff, John Kelly, to utter despair. He is reported "to be deeply frustrated and unsure how to contain his boss," who, as Kelly must know by now, is uncontainable in his deeply frustrating lunacy. Kelly's departure is all but certain. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a Jew working for a neo-Nazi apologist, is said to be on the verge of quitting. The White House has released a statement on Cohn's tenure that says "Nothing has changed … [and] any reports to the contrary are 100 percent false," which virtually guarantees that the rumors are true. Michael Gerson observes: "Now the operative question is not 'Should Bannon leave?' It has become: 'Why should anyone not named Bannon stay at the White House?'" It's a snake pit of bigotry, lies, and propaganda so squalid it would make Baghdad Bob blush.

Trump's job approval rating has, in a mere seven months, dipped from a January "high" of 46 percent to the mid-30s. And the 20s are beckoning. (As is Bob Mueller.)

What is Trump's response to all the bleakness contained in all these shifts? Why, it's to tweet about the "beauty" of memorials to 19th-century traitors. He has reduced himself to the further irreducible: His freshly emphasized platform is that of neo-Confederacy and paeans to blood-and-soil nationalism.

As noted, the 20s are beckoning — because his shtick of perpetual outrage is getting old to all those beyond the psychologically diseased and deliriously loyal. Except in the most scarlet of congressional districts, Trump's support will wither to the point of diminishing returns for Republican congressfolk. And then the beginning will morph into the end; in fact, the portentous shifts are already in progress.

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Trump's ground is shifting

Something is changing. There are shifts all around, portending an enlightened permanency. They're in the air, on the air, in print and in polling — and they're screaming that this country has just about had it with Trump. Irrevocably.

A small core of the fanatically loyal will hang on till the bitter end, of course, but an end there shall be, in either resignation or impeachment. Trump's party is already disgraced beyond redemption, but ultimately his loyal core will shrink to a stat of dismissibility — and then the GOP will pretend it's a party of noble indignation and inviolable standards. After all of Trump's lies and outrages and ineptitude and obstructions of justice, one would have thought that Charlottesville would have been the end. It was instead just another beginning, but this beginning appears to be one of permanent shifts.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and erstwhile defender of the Trumpian faith, has pronounced the president unstable and incompetent. Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (as well as the Dixie state's senior senator, Lindsey Graham) has further pronounced him as lacking in moral clarity. Scott says he'll no longer "defend the indefensible."

The founder of the pro-Trump journal American Affairs, Julius Krein, has given up and is cashing it in. "I can’t stand by this disgraceful administration any longer," he writes in a NY Times op-ed. "His refusal this weekend to specifically and immediately denounce [neo-Nazis] was both morally disgusting and monumentally stupid." So was Krein's early defense and lingering support of Trump, but at any rate his belated disgust is one more leg kicked out from under Trump's editorial infrastructure.

Business leaders are fleeing this morally bankrupt and monumentally stupid president. The American Cancer Society and the Cleveland Clinic have both announced they are cancelling their 2018 fundraisers at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce has asked that others avoid the venue. An 86-year-old Kennedy Center recipient, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade, says she'll decline the following White House reception "in light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative [of] our current leadership."

Said "leadership" has brought its chief of staff, John Kelly, to utter despair. He is reported "to be deeply frustrated and unsure how to contain his boss," who, as Kelly must know by now, is uncontainable in his deeply frustrating lunacy. Kelly's departure is all but certain. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a Jew working for a neo-Nazi apologist, is said to be on the verge of quitting. The White House has released a statement on Cohn's tenure that says "Nothing has changed … [and] any reports to the contrary are 100 percent false," which virtually guarantees that the rumors are true. Michael Gerson observes: "Now the operative question is not 'Should Bannon leave?' It has become: 'Why should anyone not named Bannon stay at the White House?'" It's a snake pit of bigotry, lies, and propaganda so squalid it would make Baghdad Bob blush.

Trump's job approval rating has, in a mere seven months, dipped from a January "high" of 46 percent to the mid-30s. And the 20s are beckoning. (As is Bob Mueller.)

What is Trump's response to all the bleakness contained in all these shifts? Why, it's to tweet about the "beauty" of memorials to 19th-century traitors. He has reduced himself to the further irreducible: His freshly emphasized platform is that of neo-Confederacy and paeans to blood-and-soil nationalism.

As noted, the 20s are beckoning — because his shtick of perpetual outrage is getting old to all those beyond the psychologically diseased and deliriously loyal. Except in the most scarlet of congressional districts, Trump's support will wither to the point of diminishing returns for Republican congressfolk. And then the beginning will morph into the end; in fact, the portentous shifts are already in progress.